Learn about the history of science by reading about the significant scientific events that took place on this day in history.
1974 - Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett died.
Sosayso/Wikimedia Commons
Blackett was a British physicist who was awarded the 1948 Nobel Prize for the development of the Wilson cloud chamber radiation detector and his studies on cosmic radiation. A cloud chamber is a sealed chamber containing a supersaturated, supercooled vapor of water or alcohol. When ionizing radiation passes through the chamber, it ionizes the vapor and a condensation trail forms where the ions are formed.
1937 - Henry Edward Armstrong died.
Imperial College Archives/Wikimedia Commons
Armstrong was an English chemist and educator who made great contributions to the synthetic dye industry though his work with naphthalene and its derivatives. Much of his scientific research was done on the subject of terpenes such as camphor and came close to recognizing the centric structure of benzene.
As an educator, he was one of the first to recognize the need for scientific thinking and attitudes in industry and created a chemical engineering degree at Imperial College in London.
1921 - Gabriel Lippmann died.
Bulletin de la société astronomique de France, 1913
Lippmann was a Luxemborgish physicist who created the first color photographic plate. The Lippmann plate used a glass plate coated with a silver emulsion on one side. The other side is exposed to light while the emulsion side is backed by a reflective material such as mercury. The light is reflected back and interferes with the incoming light creating a Bragg diffraction pattern. After the plate is processed, the patterns can be viewed by the reflection of a diffuse light source in color. Lippman was awarded the 1908 Nobel Prize in Physics for this process.
1896 - Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz died.
Library of Congress
Kekulé was a German theoretical chemist who was the first to describe the ring structure of benzene and that carbon could have a valence of 4. These discoveries involving the carbon atom greatly expanded the understanding of organic chemistry.
